An economic adviser to President Donald Trump has dismissed Americans’ worries over the state of the economy, claiming their concerns are a reaction to rapid movements by the administration rather than the rising consumer prices millions are having to deal with due to the president’s policies. In comments to CNBC earlier this week, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett claimed that…
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An earlier version of this speech was delivered at the 2026 Izzy Awards ceremony at the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, NY, on April 21, 2026.
Friends, colleagues, fellow human beings,
You don’t need to read Project Censored’s latest State of the Free Press report to know that the state of the free press in America is not good (but, obviously, you should still read the report).
And it’s not just President Trump, his administration, and the MAGA faithful repeatedly, publicly expressing their hatred and verbalizing threats towards journalists and media organizations that don’t tow the Supreme Leader’s line. It’s not just Trump and his cabinet bullying and berating journalists at press briefings, restricting their access, and trying to make them sign loyalty pledges.
It’s also Trump’s absurd and gangsterish lawsuits targeted at ABC News, which is owned by Disney, and CBS News, which is owned by Paramount, and the morally spineless, financially self-serving capitulation of these corporate cowards to Trump by settling, rather than fighting, those lawsuits—setting the precedent for more shakedowns.
It’s the multi-pronged attempt by the Trump administration and the ruling-class-serving authors and executors of Project 2025 to destroy the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which they succeeded in doing, and to defund and destroy PBS and NPR, which they are still trying to do now.
It’s the federal harassment, capture, imprisonment, and even deportation of journalists like Estefany Rodríguez, Mario Guevara, Sami Hamdi, and Georgia Fort. Even Don Lemon. Even Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was snatched off the street last year by plainclothes federal thugs for co-authoring an op-ed in her campus newspaper.
It’s the professional journalists, student journalists,
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 08, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
A top state utilities regulator is calling foul on an effort to shift the power cost of out-of-state artificial intelligence data centers onto Maryland residents.
Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel on Thursday filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) against electric grid operator PJM Interconnection objecting to plans that it said would force residents in the state to pay $1.6 billion in data center-driven transmission costs over the next decade.
The complaint states that the transmission cost allocation methodology PJM is using “broadly socializes” the cost of increased power demands that is being driven by AI data centers.
“That result is unjust and unreasonable and violates the cost causation principles that have long governed transmission cost allocation and that this commission has repeatedly affirmed,” the complaint says. “PJM’s tariff imposes these costs on Maryland electric customers even though Maryland customers do not meaningfully cause nor benefit from those investments.”
The Office of People’s Counsel pointed to the massive number of data centers built in neighboring Virginia as a primary culprit for added strain on the electric grid.
“Amidst national data center growth, Virginia stands as the epicenter,” the complaint says. “Virginia is the largest data center market in the world… As of December 2024, data centers represented 3.6 GW of demand… reflecting, since 2013, a 660% increase in megawatt-hour consumption.”
This explosive growth in energy demand is only expected to intensify over the next several years, the complaint continues, noting that “PJM projects 32 GW of peak load growth across its territory by 2030, of which approximately 30 GW
Recent polling has made it abundantly clear that Americans have soured on Donald Trump’s handling of the economy. In fact, some recent surveys have shown the president’s numbers dropping to a career low amid weak economic growth, rising inflation and the weakest job market in years.
In general, Trump’s response to the conditions has been to pretend everything is awesome. At a White House event on Wednesday afternoon, for example, the president said the current economy is “blowing away” the “best economic numbers” the United States has ever had. A week earlier, the president similarly said the economy is “roaring,” adding that the status quo is “the greatest economy we’ve ever had.”
None of this was even remotely true — and given Americans’ attitudes, Trump is taking a political risk by responding to discontent with absurd happy talk. Just as notably, the president tends to avoid specific details or reference to actual economic metrics, preferring instead to argue that the economy just seems great to him.
On Wednesday morning, however, the top economist in Trump’s White House approached the issue in a different kind of way. NBC News reported:
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an interview on Fox’s “Mornings with Maria” that Americans were spending more money on credit cards, framing it as a positive sign for the economy. […]
Hassett said that he met with the head of a bank yesterday [Tuesday] and that the two reviewed credit card data. “Just as Secretary Bessent said, credit card spending is through the roof,” he said, referring to a quote from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Fox played
If it had not been stopped at an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank, the garbage truck carrying more than 70 Palestinian laborers seeking work would likely have been able to enter Israel without incident. But on April 13, the driver was held outside the Israeli settlement of Ariel for failure to carry a license fit for the vehicle, and upon further inspection…
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As workers around the world celebrate and recognize their efforts on May 1 — known globally as May Day or International Workers’ Day and celebrated in Palestine as Labor Day — this day passes in Palestine under a harsh economic reality that reflects a deepening crisis in the labor market and unprecedented levels of unemployment. According to data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of…
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